


Till the Leaders have Spoken

by Drag0nst0rm



Series: As Old and as True as the Sky [10]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Family, Gen, Pack, Starts pre-canon, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:01:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11816985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drag0nst0rm/pseuds/Drag0nst0rm
Summary: One pack doesn't want him. One pack wants him a little too much.And one pack? One pack's just right.





	Till the Leaders have Spoken

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own NCIS. Or Kipling.

_"When pack meets with pack in the jungle, and neither will go from the trail,/Lie down till the leaders have spoken; it may be fair words shall prevail.” - Rudyard Kipling_

 

_The oldest packs were family packs. A lot of packs were still that way._

_1._

The full moon called to both of his parents, though admittedly in very different ways. It brought the wolf out in his father - subtly during the day, then transformatively at night. No matter what shape he was in, though, it was still his father. Senses keener, maybe, a little sharper sometimes, a little more nostalgic for the family that had kicked him out when he married Tony’s mother, but still his father.

Tony’s mother on the other hand . . . She went wild.

Eyes dancing. Always laughing. Pulling him into dancing with her on the beach, singing in a language he didn’t quite recognize, talking in riddles and word games.

They’d spend the nights on the moon drenched beach together. His father would run around in wolven form, and his mother would dance with her arms raised to the moon. Tony would join them, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another.

When he was young, it was fun. A chance to stay up past his bedtime and do whatever he wanted.

When he got older, it got less fun. He started noticing the ragged edges to his mother’s laughter. He started noticing the way she got lost in the music and had to start again.

He definitely noticed when his ever graceful mother stumbled and fell in the middle of her dance.

His father ran over and nudged her side with his nose, whining a little.

His mother just threw her head back and laughed and laughed.

The day before the next full moon, she walked into the sea.

 

_2._

Tony’s ears weren’t quite as sharp as his mother’s had been, but they were quite sharp enough to catch at least some of the other end of a phone call, even if he’d been on the other side of a thick door at the time.

It took him a moment to place the voice. It wasn’t one he’d heard very often, and every time he’d heard it before . . . 

Shouting. That was what he’d remembered. Every time he’d heard it before, the voice had been shouting. 

Grandfather. That’s who it had been.

He knocked on the door with more confidence than he felt. He decided to take his father’s distracted grunt as permission to come in.

His father was sitting at his desk and staring at the blank wall in front of him like he could see right through it.

“Dad?” Tony asked cautiously.

His father started. “Tony! What are you doing here?”

“I haven’t seen you all day,” Tony pointed out. “I haven’t seen you for the past two days.”

“Yes, well, I’ve been busy . . . “ He started fiddling with the papers on his desk.

“What did Grandfather want? I thought he wasn’t talking to us.”

His father glanced up and and tried to smile. It didn’t quite work. “Yes. Well, in light of - recent events - He’s reconsidering.”

The penny dropped. “Because Mom died.” His mouth twisted.

His father’s eyes grew pained for just a moment, but he pushed through it. “Because there’s very little to fight over any more.” His eyes grew distant. “Two’s not quite ideal for a pack, you know, and it’s been so long . . . “

So long since his father had run with proper wolves. So long since he’d seen the rest of the family.

Tony felt a burning ball of anger in the pit of his stomach every time he thought of how they’d hated Mom, but he had to admit he was curious. He’d never met any family outside of his parents. All he had were overheard arguments on the phone.

“Are we going to go visit them or something?” he asked cautiously.

His father swallowed. “Something like that.” He considered Tony for a moment. His critical gaze made Tony suddenly very aware of the mud he’d tracked in with him. “Yes, it will be for the best.”

Two weeks later, Tony was off to his first boarding school. His father was on a plane to Italy. 

It didn’t take Tony long to put the pieces together. The pack might be willing to welcome the prodigal home, but his half-breed son was another matter. Better to ship the embarrassment off and to deal with him only when absolutely necessary.

Tony was very little to fight over, after all.

 

**There were other kinds of pack too, of course, especially in modern times. Packs bonded by choice, not blood.**

**1.**

There was never any question of going on the cruise with his former frat brothers. Sure, technically he’d be perfectly safe from the water on the cruise ship, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. Besides, it would mean a week away from his pack and while that was doable, he’d spend the whole time anxious to get back, and the last thing he needed was for McGee and Ziva to tease him about being a worrywart.

But the invitation to the cruise had brought to mind the matter of how he’d pay for the trip if had decided to go, and that had reminded him of the trust waiting for him in a bank account.

He didn’t need the money, certainly not urgently, but it was his and both sets of instincts had very firm imperatives about claiming things that were his. So when he saw his father still listed as overseeing the account . . . 

Well, might as well go ahead and take care of it. Maybe then the next time one of them had a medicine defying injury, they could pay for a healer instead of relying on McGee. They didn’t need a repeat of the post-amnesia-ice-McGee.

So. Call Dad. Grit his teeth through the necessary conversation to get him to take care of it. Save the money for a rainy day. Simple.

Right up until his dad decided to show up.

He saw his dad standing down there by his desk and he just - froze. He could hear McGoo saying something, but he couldn’t focus on it.

Because that was his dad. Right there.

And his fey side was saying, He betrayed you, he hurt you, punish him, kill him, and the old, frail bonds of pack were saying, Leader, leader, go, obey, and the newer bonds of pack were saying, Intruder, wrong, threat, you’re a traitor to think otherwise -

“Dad.” The word fell quietly into the chaos of the bullpen, but his dad heard anyway. He looked up and waved.

McGee, to his credit, stopped babbling and said, “I’ll go get Gibbs,” in a slightly squeaky voice.

Tony decided not to tease him about it.

He headed down to his desk in a daze. For once, his instincts weren’t telling him what to do. Or, rather, they were telling him too much to do, and that was sort of like having free choice, and he just - didn’t know. He wished Gibbs would hurry up and get here and bark orders for them to get back to work. Then he could just bury all this and move on.

His instincts screamed at the idea of the two of them in the same room, insisting it would end in blood, but that was stupid. They weren’t rival pack leaders, this wasn’t the dark ages, and Tony wasn’t worth fighting over anyway.

His dad beamed at him when he finally got down the stairs “Junior! How’ve you been?”

Tony’s skin felt hot and stretched. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Pretty good. Nearly went mad from the isolation once or twice, but what can you do?” He looked his dad in the eye as he said. A challenge.

His dad just waved a hand dismissively. “Always so dramatic. I take it you’re with one of the D.C. packs now?”

He wanted to say, “Yeah, this one,” but that wasn’t strictly accurate, was it? The team was his pack, but that pack was a delicate construction of his perception and Gibbs’ tolerance. Abby might be willing to go for the label, but Ziva wouldn’t, and he wasn’t sure about McGee. He wasn’t about to risk getting shot down about that now of all times. 

“Why are you here, Dad?” he asked instead. “The account? Because you really didn’t have to come here for that. Really.”

His dad smiled at him, that old conman’s smile, and said, “Can’t I just want to come and see my only son?”

Tony could smell his father’s pack on him. Cousins. Aunts. Uncles. Grandparents. All the people Senior had abandoned him for.

“You never have before,” he pointed out, and things - kind of went downhill from there.

Not in a screaming match way. Tony might not have minded a nice cathartic screaming match.

But Gibbs came back in and told them they needed to get to the hotel which would have been fine if his dad hadn’t managed to keep Tony behind for just “One moment, I need to ask my son something,” and the once they were alone - 

It was like being a kid again. The old instincts grabbed hold, and he answered his dad’s questions like they were still a pack, or like Tony was still that scared kid at boarding school, doing anything and everything just to try and get his dad’s attention from an ocean away.

The moment he was alone in the elevator, he felt sick, and just the thought of facing Gibbs after that made him want to punch something, and the worst part was, if he told somebody, they wouldn’t even get it.

He hadn’t spilled any overly sensitive information. He’d bent the rules a bit, but not more than any of the others have done in the past. Gibbs will be a little irritated he’s late, and that’s it.

If this was a wolf pack, it would be different. If this was a wolf pack, Gibbs would be in his face demanding he pick a side right now.

But this wasn’t a wolf pack. It was his pack.

He successfully resisted both the urge to punch the elevator wall and the urge to throw up.

Go him.

 

**2.**

Gibbs had made it a point to know as much as he could about his team, but he didn’t know everything. He couldn’t always predict what would set them off.

This time, though, he hadn’t needed Ducky’s trivia strewn analysis of the werewolf mind to get it. He didn’t know what DiNozzo’s childhood had been like or what had led him here, but he did know how close to the edge DiNozzo had been in Baltimore, and he knew he hadn’t considered going to his father an option. That was all Gibbs really needed to know.

He wasn’t exactly sorry to have the chance to drag the man into interrogation.

“Meet the real Tony DiNozzo,” the man said with a smile.

Gibbs chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Our Tony’s pretty one of a kind.”

Senior’s eyes were suddenly reassessing. Caught on the possessive, most likely. “I don’t suppose you know what pack he’s joined, do you? I can’t get a straight answer out of him.”

Gibbs smiled. “He’s one of us.”

_“Interesting thing about smiles,” Ducky had told him once. “Nearly every other species instinctively thinks it’s a threat when you bare your teeth. It might explain something about our early interactions with some groups, certainly - “_

He held his smile even as Senior subtly tried to capture the scent of the room again. 

Wondering if he’d missed something. Trying to catch a trace of a wolf.

Gibbs didn’t need magic to keep his teeth sharp.

He pushed through the rest of the interview. The result was pretty much what he’d expected. Anthony DiNozzo Sr. had not placed the bomb. Gibbs doubted that anyone really thought he had; werewolves weren’t exactly known for killing remotely at such a distance that they couldn’t even see the blood.

Gibbs was pretty sure one of them was going to use that fact someday, but that wasn’t the point at the moment.

He leaned back in his chair. Interview over. Time to let Senior think he could relax. “You going to be staying in town for a while?”

Senior raised an eyebrow. “Is this the point where you warn me off?”

Gibbs snorted. “If Tony wants you gone, I have full confidence in his ability to kick you out.” If Tony wanted his father in his life, than Gibbs wasn’t going to stand in the way. He’d even help, if it turned out there was anything he could do. “But if you’re planning to skip out on him before he has the chance to decide, then I thought it was only fair to warn you.” He stood and nailed Senior with every last bit of the steel that he’d used to survive this insane world. “You leave him now, you don’t come back. ‘Cause if you do, we’ll be waiting.”

 

**3.**

He knew it was bad when Tony let the door slam behind him without pestering Gibbs to start keeping it locked.

Gibbs already had the steaks ready. Medium well done for himself, very well done for Tony.

Judging by the way he’d seen Tony look at the meat when it was raw, he suspected that Tony’s consistency in requesting it well done had more to do with making some kind of point point than it was real preference, but he wasn’t Ducky. It wasn’t his job to pyschoananlyze it.

Tony paced around the room. He was shaking, ever so slightly, like he was on the verge of a transformation, and his eyes were filled with a feverish fey light.

“Gone! Just like that. No note, no goodbye, no ‘I love you’ - You know, I don’t think I’ve heard him say that since - ever, possibly. Mom said it more than him, and the fey treat those words like they’re some kind of explosive. I paid for the stinking hotel room, and do I even get a thank you?” He paused for breath.

“Hanging around your mom might have trained him out of thank you’s,” Gibbs pointed out mildly.

Tony turned sharply, something even sharper very visibly building in his mouth, but he swallowed it just before it burst. He deflated, and the shadows in the room seemed to retreat a little for it. “Yeah. Maybe.” He sank down onto the couch.

Gibbs passed him one of the steaks. “Here. Eat.”

Tony smiled wryly. “Thanks, Boss.” He leaned back into the seat cushions. “You know, the way I grew up, it took me forever to learn to say that once I got sent to school. It freaked me out at first, everyone tossing those words around.”

Gibbs wondered if Tony realized that he still avoided those words with everyone outside the team, deflecting them like blows in a fight. Only with the team did he let them slip out, like he didn’t care as much about the obligation implied.

That wasn’t the point of the evening though, and they both knew it. “Think he’ll come back?” Gibbs asked mildly.

Tony looked down at his plate and shrugged. “Probably not. He wouldn’t have come this time if he didn’t already have business in the area.” His smile came out a bit twisted. “The rest of the family won’t be pleased he met up with the mongrel half-”

Gibbs cuffed him around the head. Tony looked up at him, eyes dark with pain instead of danger.

“Their loss,” Gibbs said firmly. He nodded to the steak. “You gonna eat that or stare it into submission?”

Tony gave a weak chuckle and dug into it. He looked up a bit nervously after only a few more bites. “Sorry I was kind out of it during the case, Boss.”

Sorry. Another one of those words fey didn’t throw around a lot.

For that matter, he didn’t either. “Never apologize,” he reminded him. He rose to take his plate to the kitchen. “It’s getting pretty late,” he called back as he went. “Spare room’s open if you need it.”

He’d get Tony through the night, and he’d let Abby know about the problem tomorrow.

You stuck by your team. That was what it was for.

 

_**In the old days, there was a werewolf king. It’s said that he had the allegiance of all the packs in Italy. He went to war to try to become king of all the wolves in Europe.** _

_**He fell eventually, but the precedent for a liege pack was set.** _

_**1.** _

There was a long list of things Tony didn’t appreciate. Getting framed for murder - again - was definitely one of them.

Especially since, one of these days, he was pretty sure the team was going to stop buying that it was a frame job and start thinking they had a mad wolf on their hands.

They might not even be wrong. He was probably halfway there already. He’d killed and liked the feel of the blood in his throat -

_He'd killed in the course of duty and thrown up afterward until his stomach had been empty, and he’d come to the sudden realization he was crying -_

And everyone knew he had issues, he was pretty sure the only reason they kept passing his psyche evals was because they were under some delusion that he couldn’t lie when he answered their questions -

_Probably the only reason they let most of the team stay in the field, honestly -_

And there was something so wrong with him that no wolf in the world would let him into their pack, they could smell the wrongness on him -

_He had a pack, he wasn’t worthless, he HAD A PACK -_

Tony slammed his hand into the wall and took a certain vicious satisfaction in the dent in the concrete and the blood slipping down his knuckles.

“I see you don’t do well in confinement.”

Tony spun. A man was lounging against the bars of the holding cell. Well, he said a man; the hoodie and mischievous features made him lean more towards an older teenager.

Right up until he caught sight of the eyes.

Green eyes, not that it mattered. What mattered was the ageless power swirling behind them.

“Fey,” he said flatly.

“Anthony D. DiNozzo Junior.” The fey rolled the syllables around in his mouth like he was savoring them.

“That’s my name,” he agreed. And you’re never getting the rest of it. “You want to tell me yours?”

The fey grinned, revealing razor sharp teeth. “Call me Grimalkin. He owes me a favor, so I might as well borrow his name.”

“Alright, Grimy, what do you want? This isn’t exactly the most interesting square on the block?”

Grimalkin’s smile grew wider. Tony didn’t think that was a good sign. “My king wishes to meet with you.”

Tony gestured to the cell. “Well, as you can tell, I’m a little tied up at the moment. Tell him to get back to me later.”

The fey stroked one of the bars. The metal shivered. “My king is not accustomed to waiting. I have been authorized to . . . overcome any obstacles that might disappoint him on that front.”

Grimy was offering to break him out of here.

Tony leaned against the wall with feigned casualness. “I thought the Accords frowned on things like that.”

“Oh, no,” Grimy assured him. “The Accords are very clear on the procedures for suspected criminals. This? This is not the Accorded way to deal with an accused member of Oberon’s court. We can do whatever we wish to correct the situation.”

“That’s all very nice,” Tony said slowly. “But I’m not a member of Oberon’s court.”

“Aren’t you?” Grimalkin made a coin dance across his knuckles.

No. Not a coin. Oberon’s sigil.

“No,” he said firmly.

“And when the walls start closing in?” Grimalkin asked softly. “When you haven’t seen the moon in a fortnight and the shadows start caressing your throat until you can’t breathe from the weight of them? When they exchange those toy cuffs for cursed metal, your pack abandons you, and your mind starts to tear itself apart? What then?”

The walls seemed to close in as he spoke. The stale air grew thicker. Phantom hands squeezed around his neck.

He stepped forward to the bars with a snarl. “It won’t come to that.”

“So much faith,” Grimalkin murmured. “Well, perhaps it will, and perhaps it won’t, but you can’t last out here forever, child. Sooner or later you’ll need us. And when you do - ” He flipped the sigil into the cell. “All you have to do is call.”

“I’ve no need for faerie gifts,” Tony said in a dangerously soft voice.

“That’s not a faerie gift. That’s a faerie promise.” Grimy’s smile grew impossibly sharper. “And it’s not as if you wouldn’t be giving us something in exchange.”

Tony stepped back from the bars. “I won’t swear service to your king.”

But Grimalkin was already gone.

 

**_2._ **

The sigil followed him. 

It was always on the ground, a few feet away, just visible from the corner of his eye. Daring him to pick it up.

Except for one tense incident where Tony yelped for McGee not to touch it, he ignored it. This was helped by the fact that only he, McGee, and possibly Ducky could actually see the thing.

They’d gotten him out of the murder charge and more or less caught the people responsible, but Abby kept insisting there was a fey connection they hadn’t managed to track down.

Tony resisted the urge to bang his head on his desk. “Those sneaky - Of course there’s a fey connection. Of course there is. They set the whole thing up to - ” He spun and punched his filing cabinet. 

Punched through it, to be exact.

He was just pulling out his trembling fist when Gibbs strolled around the corner.

“We got a problem here?”

“Fey are trying to recruit again, Boss,” Tim said helpfully.

“Why do they even want me?” Tony moaned. “I’m not even full fey.”  
“Perhaps that is why,” Ziva suggested. “You yourself told us that you are the only human-fey hybrid on the registration list, yes? Is this still true?”

McGeek nodded. “I set up an alert on it. Still only one DiNozzo.”

“There you are then,” Ziva said, leaning across her desk. “You are currently unique, and if there have been others before you, I have certainly never heard of them. Perhaps the Fair King fancies himself a bit of a collector.”

“I am not one of McGeek’s action figures.”

McGee tilted his head. “I don’t know, Tony, the idea’s got merit.”

Tony didn’t disagree with that. He just really, really didn’t want to think about it. He sent a pleading look at Gibbs.

Gibbs, thankfully, rose magnificently to the occasion. “What about ideas on our actual case?”

Ziva and McGee scrambled to gather their files.

Tony eyed the little circle of metal glinting evilly on the floor.

 

_**3.** _

By the time Bishop and Gibbs went missing, he’d almost forgotten about his little stalker.

Almost.

Now it was four days without any sign of them, he hadn’t slept since they’d vanished, and the coin was talking to him.

“She’ll kill him soon, you know.”

He knew that. Oh, how he knew that. But pack bonds would only take him so far, and right now, they weren’t taking him far enough.

Running like a wolf possessed around the town they’d vanished in wasn’t a good tactic to try and fix that problem, but it was the best they had.

“She will gnaw on his bones in the dark, and there will be nothing you can do.”

He growled. If he was going to have to deal with a hallucination, it could at least be an encouraging one.

“Oh, I am very real, Anthony. And this story doesn’t have to end this way. I can help you if you let me.”

Tony missed a step but grimly kept running. _Oberon._

“I am sure there was a title in there somewhere.”

_Tell me where to find Gibbs, and I’ll call you anything you want._

“Ah.” A delicate pause. “Including ‘liege lord?’”

Tony swallowed. _You drive a hard bargain._

“I get what I want.”

_You killed my mother._

“Pointless defiance killed your mother. With two members of your pack’s lives on the line, I do not think you will make the same mistake.”

And - That was the thing. Tony would literally rather chew his own arm off than swear to Oberon.

But to save Gibbs. To save Bishop.

His ties to them quivered as if anticipating the impending severance.

And they settled slightly differently than they had before.

There. That road.

Tony’s trot turned into a dead run.

“An inopportune moment, I see. Well, keep the coin. When you are desperate, you may call on me. But be careful. You have refused me twice. Refuse me thrice, and I shall be forced to consider you in rebellion.”

Tony shivered, but all things considered, he had more important concerns than the threat.

 

_3._

“Pretty!” 

Tony snatched Thalia up before she could touch the sigil on the floor. “No,” he said firmly. “We don’t touch that.”

“Pretty,” Thalia insisted with a pout.

Tony took one look at those pleading blue eyes and sighed. “I’m going to have to get McGee to make some kind of charm to stop you, aren’t I? Well, not McGee. He’s given up on magic,” he told her as he swung her onto his hip. “Maybe he knows someone.” Or Ducky would. 

A knock came at the door. “Open up, DiNozzo,” an irritated voice called.

Tony relaxed. “Thank goodness.” He bounced Thalia a little as he walked towards the door. “Alright, Thalia. How’d you like to meet your Grandpa Gibbs?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm marking the series complete for now. I may change my mind later, but for now I want to focus on finally finishing Choice and Chance.


End file.
